24 frames per second

There is a preternatural stillness to Kaathal – The Core, Jeo Baby’s latest directorial starring Mammooty and Jyothika. People pray with solemnity, and there’s a lot of praying throughout the film. Courtroom arguments are presented in a normal tone of voice. Even a political campaign where one candidate uses a microphone is interrupted by rain, as though nature were a curmudgeonly librarian.

And most telling of all, the major characters in the film don’t share conversations that have wended their way through the many years they have known each other — they share silences. These, however, aren’t people with little to say to each other, even though that is precisely what a character claims at one point. It’s as though someone read about how dark matter is hypothesized to constitute 85% of the universe and decided to write a domestic drama on the premise.

This is not just a feature of these relationships. Even the issue that is central to the film — the reason why the wife of a very well-regarded man files for divorce when he is contesting a local election — is discussed by everyone in the first half of the film but never explicitly verbalized. In a way, it is a sly commentary on how much trouble we have talking about things that matter.

As intriguing as it all sounds, this is a very problematic strategy from a filmmaking standpoint. How do you get the audience to understand what’s going on without letting the characters say much? There are a few extremely cathartic moments towards the end of the film, but those payoffs are earned only if the audience is primed for them. And said audience has to be primed by characters who play their cards extremely close their chest. The writing and the performances have to convey so much while doing so little. Do too much, and it all comes across as a bit on the nose. Do too little, and it comes across as dull. It is to the immense credit of Jeo Baby and his cast that you are never in doubt as to what is happening.

Take the Thankam character, for example. There is an incredibly well-framed scene just before the interval, where you see him, Mammooty and a bunch of party workers. Not a single line of dialogue is spoken, but you could pick out any random member of the audience and they’d be able to write an essay on what the characters are thinking.

I spent a fair bit of time trying to figure out if I should reveal what the story was about, but then I realized that I didn’t have to worry, so here goes: Omana, the wife of Matthew Devassy, divorces her husband of twenty years because she alleges that he is gay.

The beauty of the film is that it is not about whether or not he is gay. Even if you hadn’t encountered any of the media buzz around the film, you realize very soon that he is, indeed, gay. Not because Mammooty exhibits the mannerisms you are used to seeing in portrayals of gay people on screen, but because he exhibits… nothing. He says as little as possible, and keeps his responses and his denials — even to questions on his sexuality in court — as banal as possible. But here’s the thing: he is so palpably opaque, he is practically transparent. So you, the viewer, are no longer concerned with his gayness. You’re concerned with whether he would, at any point, admit to it. Or even admit to any overt emotion. It makes the closing segment of the film so much more effective.

What Mammooty achieves in this film is nothing short of transcendent. In Nanpakal Nerathu Mayakkam, he played a man with a lot happening on the surface, with nary a hint of what’s going on underneath. This performance is its mirror image. At seventy-two, he’s still finding a new gear.

The counterpoint to this character is his wife Omana. In the beginning, you see her send off a manuscript through a colleague. The conversation, all of two lines long, implies that she writes fiction. And you realize, not too long after, how those two lines tell us something — in response to the carefully constructed fiction that is her marriage, she has sought refuge in producing fiction that is ostensibly a lot more exciting and romantic. Jyothika’s recent performances have reached for depth but come across as more strained than anything else — here, she seems to hardly reach for an effect, yet delivers precisely what is required.

Since this is Kerala and the events take place at the same time as a local election, the word comrade is bandied about often. But the comradeship you really see is in this central relationship. The two of them have an extraordinary moment in the closing scene of the film. He walks away from her table at a restaurant and the camera dwells for a moment on her reaction, as well as on his. Live a lie long enough, and you’ll find some undeniable truths.